The Labour Party has taken aim at Rishi Sunak and his tax affairs with an advert targeting his wife’s previous non-dom tax status
In a string of political adverts on Twitter, the Labour Party has criticised the prime minister for benefiting from a non-dom tax loophole as households continue to struggle with the rising cost of living.
The latest advert, posted on Twitter, says: ‘Do you think it’s right to raise taxes for working people when your family benefitted from a tax loophole? Rishi Sunak does.’
It pointed out that the Conservatives ‘have raised taxes 24 times since 2019’ while refusing to ‘close the non-dom tax loophole’ for foreign residents in the UK.
The political advert hits at Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murthy, who previously held non-dom tax status, which allows UK residents whose permanent homes are abroad to avoid paying British taxes on overseas income by being taxed on a remittance basis.
Murthy reportedly saved £20m of UK tax on foreign earnings from her billionaire father’s Indian IT company, Infosys. She gave up her non-dom tax status in April 2022 and said she would pay tax in the UK.
High net worth individuals with non-domicile status reportedly avoid paying more than £3.2bn of tax on at least £10.9bn of offshore income a year, according to a report by the University of Warwick and London School of Economics.
The non-dom scheme has been reformed several times over the past 15 years, most recently in 2017 when the Conservatives introduced new rules that were designed to ‘end permanent non-dom status’ for long-term UK residents, which led to just 0.2% of long-staying non-doms leaving the UK.
However, controversy over the risks of non-dom individuals leaving the UK in response to reform has remained a concern.
The advert continued: ‘A Labour government would freeze council tax this year, paid for by a proper windfall tax on oil and gas giants. And we’d scrap the Tories’ non-dom tax loophole.’
It is the fourth advert to have been posted by the Labour Party in a campaign targeting the Conservatives’ policies on law and order.
Keir Starmer, the Labour Party leader, urged MPs to ‘continue to focus relentlessly on exposing the failures’ of the Conservative government in the run-up to the local elections, which will take place on 4 May 2023.
In an opinion piece for the Daily Mail, Starmer added that he would ‘make absolutely zero apologies for being blunt’.
A number of Labour figures have distanced themselves from the adverts – currently 13 of Labour’s shadow cabinet, which has 31 members, have not shared any of the party’s adverts.
On Twitter, John McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington, and former shadow Chancellor, said: ‘This is not the sort of politics a Labour Party, confident of its own values and preparing to govern, should be engaged in. I say to the people who have taken the decision to publish this ad, please withdraw it. We, the Labour Party, are better than this.’
Further scheduled adverts are set to include the Conservatives ‘crashing the economy’ as a result of higher housing costs.
